In these lower levels there was more smoke, that smeared out and thickened the mist.  Suddenly a breath of air parted the fog as if it were a torn curtain.  Like a shot Bobby went down the crag, leaping from rock to rock, scrambling under thorns and hazel shrubs, dropping over precipitous ledges, until he looked down a sheer fall on which not even a knot of grass could find a foothold.  He took the leap instantly, and his thick fleece saved him from broken bones; but when he tried to get up again his body was racked with pain and his hind legs refused to serve him.

Turning swiftly, he snarled and bit, at them in angry disbelief that his good little legs should play false with his stout heart.  Then he quite forgot his pain, for there was the sharp ring of iron on an anvil and the dull glow of a forge fire, where a smith was toiling in the early hours of the morning.  A clever and resourceful little dog, Bobby made shift to do without legs.  Turning on his side, he rolled down the last slope of Castle Rock.  Crawling between two buildings and dropping from the terrace on which they stood, he fell into a little street at the west end and above the Grassmarket.

Here the odors were all of the stables.  He knew the way, and that it was still downward.  The distance he had to go was a matter of a quarter of a mile, or less, and the greater part of it was on the level, through the sunken valley of the Grassmarket.  But Bobby had literally to drag himself now; and he had still to pull him self up by his fore paws over the wet and greasy cobblestones of Candlemakers Row.  Had not the great leaves of the gate to the kirkyard been left on the latch, he would have had to lie there in the alcove, with his nose under the bars, until morning.  But the gate gave way to his push, and so, he dragged himself through it and around the kirk, and stretched himself on Auld Jock’s grave.

It was the birds that found him there in the misty dawn.  They were used to seeing Bobby scampering about, for the little watchman was awake and busy as early as the feathered dwellers in the kirkyard.  But, in what looked to be a wet and furry door-mat left out overnight on the grass, they did not know him at all.  The throstles and skylarks were shy of it, thinking it might be alive.  The wrens fluffed themselves, scolded it, and told it to get up.  The blue titmice flew over it in a flock again and again, with much sweet gossiping, but they did not venture nearer.  A redbreast lighted on the rose bush that marked Auld Jock’s grave, cocked its head knowingly, and warbled a little song, as much as to say:  “If it’s alive that will wake it up.”

As Bobby did not stir, the robin fluttered down, studied him from all sides, made polite inquiries that were not answered, and concluded that it would be quite safe to take a silver hair for nest lining.  Then, startled by the animal warmth or by a faint, breathing movement, it dropped the shining trophy and flew away in a shrill panic.  At that, all the birds set up such an excited crying that they waked Tammy.